Michigan fishing on the brink of a boom
Trophy fish fueling more tourist dollars

By Jeremy Pearce / The Detroit News

 

BALDWIN -- His boat drifting down Michigan's Pere Marquette River, fishing guide Ed Nemanic lifted his dripping oars and studied the tea-colored water beneath him.
   Dark shapes, nearly as long as the guide's legs, hovered in the current. Nemanic dropped anchor.
   "Steelhead," he said, without taking his eyes from the water.
   "We've had whole years when you couldn't buy a fish on this river -- freaky seasons," he said, readying his fly rod. "But look at us now."
   After troubled years that brought mediocre fishing, rampant salmon disease and lower fish numbers during the 1990s, Michigan's lake salmon and trout may be on the verge of a boom time.
   Huge increases are reported in trophy-sized steelhead trout, coho and chinook salmon, good advertising in efforts to lure more anglers, and their wallets, to Michigan waters. Fishing is an important link in Michigan's recreation economy. The state's fishery ranks eighth among U.S. states and yields $1.5 billion each year, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey taken two years ago.
   

"That includes licenses, tackle, travel, food and lodging. And it likely increased in value since then," said Thomas Coon of Michigan State University's fisheries and wildlife department.
   The numbers of big fish caught last year and verified by state officials are surprising both anglers and biologists:
   -- A leap in coho salmon, mostly from Lake Michigan, has astonished lake-watchers. Some 699 cohos weighing more than 12 pounds were caught last year. No coho of similar size was recorded the previous year.
   -- Numbers of trophy chinook salmon more than tripled. Anglers on Lakes Huron and Michigan hooked 216 fish weighing at least 27 pounds. The biggest chinook reached 40 pounds. The seasonal total in 1998 was 70 trophy fish.
   -- Big steelhead, a form of lake-dwelling rainbow trout, also reached record levels. Traveling from Lake Michigan into the Pere Marquette, Muskegon, St. Joseph and other fabled rivers, the largest steelhead topped 22 pounds. More than 70 fish weighed more than 17 pounds, the benchmark for trophy status. Only 11 steelhead reached that weight the previous year.
   "We had a banner year, a wonderful year," said Cameron Garst, a professional charter captain who runs fishing trips into Lake Michigan from Traverse City. "We can only hope this year goes nearly as well."
   Food supply plentiful
   Reasons for the wave of bigger fish are not yet clear. Despite gains for steelhead, coho and chinook, other lake-dwelling fish within the salmon family didn't fare so well.
   For example, numbers of large lake trout declined by 16 percent, from 79 trophy lakers caught in 1998 to some 66 fish last year. Catches of large brown trout, another salmon relation, rose slightly.
   Yet a consensus among lake scientists credits a bumper year in alewives -- smaller fish recognized as a key food among salmon and other game fish -- for the sudden gain in weights and sizes.
   "We had an abundance of alewives last year. Dead alewives littered Lake Michigan's beaches and salmon gorged on them," said Gerald Rakoczy, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources biologist from Charlevoix. He monitors fish catches statewide. "By the same token, populations of alewives were their lowest in the mid-1990s, the very years that we saw our poorest salmon fishing."
   Disease lowered numbers
   Other experts add that closer control of bacterial kidney disease, which still plagues salmon stocks and destroys uncounted thousands of fish, has combined with the extra food to help nurture bigger fish.
   Bacterial kidney disease attacks the kidneys, liver and spleen, consuming organs and causing fish to lose weight and scales. Scientists believe that stress and lack of food advance the disease. Most die from it.
   In 1995, it was estimated that 30 percent of Lake Michigan salmon carried the disease, which is inherited and reportedly poses no health threat to anglers.
   In the early 1990s, at the disease's height, fisheries workers culled as many diseased fish as they could find when salmon appeared at river dams. Today, Department of Natural Resources biologists say less than 10 percent of Michigan's salmon are affected.
   "We're still concerned about it, but bacterial kidney disease has become much less pressing a problem," said John Schrouder of the Department of Natural Resources' fisheries division.
   State restocks rivers
   Great Lakes coho, chinook, steelhead and many lake trout are united by their behavior and common ancestors. All four species begin their lives in rivers, and later leave those native rivers to head for deeper lake waters.
   The journey to the lake depths has perils and tremendous rewards: schools of minnows, suckers, herring, alewives and smaller fish that offer richer food than do narrow inland rivers. As a result, trout and salmon rapidly increase in size and grow to maturity. They can remain in the lakes for a span of two to five years.
   When it comes time to reproduce, instinct urges them back to the rivers from which they started.
   Coho and chinook make their way upstream, lay or fertilize their eggs, weaken and eventually die. Generous stocking of millions of young fish by state and federal hatcheries each year is necessary to ensure enough fish for anglers.
   "We know that more than 99 percent of (coho and chinook) die after that first spawning," said Dr. Gerald R. Smith, curator of fishes at the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology in Ann Arbor.
   Lake trout and steelhead, however, usually survive to spawn again. Recent, severe declines in Great Lakes levels haven't yet interrupted their passage through connecting rivers and the lakes. Lake experts say that drops would have to exceed four feet before severely pinching fish runs. This month, Lake Michigan remains 18 inches below the level measured last April.
   On the Pere Marquette, fishing guide Nemanic, 59, a retired physics professor, works by a different standard of value.
   Although he depends on dollars from angler-clients who arrive from throughout the Midwest to fish the famous river, the sight of so many steelhead this season has been a form of payment in itself.
   "There have been days when I've wondered if every fish hasn't gone out to lunch in Lake Michigan," he said, adjusting his sunglasses to tie a fresh fly on his fishing line.
   "Not this year," he said. "This has been one hell of a good year."